Art History in Practice VI & VII

Art History in Practice VI
Kūpapa/Kaupapa: Contemporary Māori art in the 1990s
Anna-Marie White

Wednesday 7 September, 5.15pm
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

This week Doctoral student at Victoria University of Wellington, Anna-Marie White, introduces her research into the history of contemporary Māori art. Her current thinking concerns the manifestations of post-colonialism and neo-liberalism in contemporary Māori art practice of the 1990s as factors that influenced the success of certain artists over others, and how their rise to prominence in the New Zealand art scene sparked a cultural war.

Anna-Marie White (Te Ātiawa) has recently begun a major study of contemporary Māori art history. She comes to Art History at Victoria University of Wellington after ten years as curator at The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū, the public art gallery in Nelson. Selected exhibitions include Kaihono Āhua / Vision Mixer: Revisioning Contemporary New Zealand Art (2013), Puehu: Cultural Dust. Contemporary Polynesian Video and Performance Art (2013), The Maui Dynasty (2008) and Pākehā Now! (2007).

Art History in Practice VI
Why get your photograph taken in Auckland, when you can do it in London?
Roger Blackley

Wednesday 14 September, 5.15pm
Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi

The corollary of nineteenth-century European appropriation of Māori culture and history was a growing Māori awareness, not only of the Pākehā world around them, but also of its deeper history and global reach. Māori travellers undertook ethnographic research in the colonisers’ metropolis and elsewhere, a process that affirmed their Māori identity in much the same way as Pākehā travellers on their O.E. were confronted by their ambiguous status as colonials. Beginning with the 1884 expedition to London by King Tāwhiao and his retinue of chiefs, Blackley presents a portrait gallery of cosmopolitan travellers.

Roger Blackley is an Associate professor in the Art History programme at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in nineteenth-century and colonial art. He is best known for his 1997 exhibition and monograph on New Zealand’s ‘old master’, Charles F. Goldie. His current project –Galleries of Māoriland – takes a deeper look at the intersections of art and ethnology in New Zealand’s collecting and display cultures at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Art History in Practice Series series is presented in partnership with the Victoria University of Wellington Art History Programme. The series showcases current art historical research by established and emerging art historians and curators, working inside and outside the academy.

For more information about the Art History in Practice seminar series, please visit our website.

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